Face (5 page)

Matthew would have none of it. ‘Piss off, will ya.'

Pete's voice took on a serious tone as he addressed Matthew. ‘You take care bout what you say, weakling, don't go upsetting me now.'

Pete kept trying to persuade the three to get into the car. Eventually he changed tactics. ‘All right, ya
gotta get to bed, we'll just take ya home.'

Martin began to weaken. 'So you'll just give us a lift home.'

‘Yeah.' Pete knew he had cracked him.

Martin was now working for the other side. ‘Don't worry, it's just a lift home, we'll be there in five minutes, even less.'

Martin went to the back door of the car and opened it.

Matthew was furious. ‘Are you really going? You're mad, you're bloody off ya head.'

Martin looked towards Mark. ‘Come on, man.'

Matthew decided that he wasn't hanging around any longer. ‘OK, Martin, you go. Mark, it's make your mind up time. I'm off – but I'm telling ya, I think you lot are mad.'

Matthew walked away. Mark looked towards Martin, then towards Matthew and then he walked around the car and got in.

Matthew shouted to his two friends in the car, ‘What kind of friends are you two? I thought we supposed to stick together. What happened to Gang of Three unity? All it takes is a troublemaker to appear with a car and unity's gone – well I'm gone.' He turned and headed home.

Martin and Mark were excited. When they had been in cars before they had just gone from A to B in an orderly manner. Now the car was mounting the
pavement, speeding over the speed humps, driving on the wrong side of the road and near missing everything. The driver had taken the car down the Barking Road and on to the A13, a major road with three lanes on each side, before Martin realised they were going the wrong way. He had to shout over the engine noise. ‘Pete, man, let's turn back.'

Pete didn't care anymore, he was playing drums with his hands on the dashboard. Martin tried again. ‘Pete, let's go back, man. What's your mate's name?'

The driver looked about twenty. He had long black hair that went halfway down his back. His upper four front teeth were all gone and he had a scar across his left cheek, all signs of a violent not so long ago. His face was a pale, bloodless white and he smelt like a pub. ‘My name's Apache, yeah man, no mercy.'

When he spoke both Martin and Mark could see he was on something. Mark tried to get more information out of him. ‘How long ya had the wheels?'

Pete played on the dashboard even harder. Apache began to laugh, a false laugh. Loudly he said, ‘Twenty minutes, man, I got dis car twenty minutes ago.'

Martin shot forward. ‘What do ya mean, ya nicked it?'

‘Look man, this is only a fourteen hundred cc baby. If I was buying one of these it'd be a two thousand. The engine in this thing is just a washing machine engine, I only nicked it cause I can't stand the owner.'

Both Pete and Apache put on tough guy laughs. Martin and Mark looked at each other. Mark shook his head as if to say no and turned to Pete. ‘Take us home, just leave us on Green Street. No, never mind Green Street, leave us here.'

The moment he said that Pete called out, ‘Coppers, there's cops behind us.'

The police car was tight behind them and flashing its headlights to get them to stop. Apache just put his foot down on the accelerator, speeding forward. The police car stayed right behind him. Martin shouted angrily, ‘You bastards, STOP!'

Apache was not listening. His plan was to head back to East Ham, the territory he knew best and try and lose the police in the back streets. As he turned off the A13 main road, Martin saw Pete throw a small package out of the window.

‘What's that?' Martin shouted above the roar of the engine.

‘I'll show you in five minutes – when we get rid of these pigs, we'll come back for it.'

They were now in a built-up area. The police put on their sirens and flashing lights. Apache and Pete seemed to love the excitement. Martin and Mark were terrified. They sped straight through a red traffic light.

Martin gripped the back of the seat in front of him. ‘Let us out. You can do what you wanna do but let us out.'

Mark ranted frantically, ‘You won't get away with it, you'll get caught. I'll tell them everything. You didn't tell us that the car was bloody nicked when we got in it.' Taking a deep breath, Mark let out a scream at the top of his voice. ‘STOP THE BLOODY CAR, WILL YA.'

Apache and Pete only looked at each other and laughed.

As they approached the junction with Green Street, they could hear more police cars in the distance. The lights were on red and cars were crossing on their right of way.

Mark and Martin shouted, ‘STOP! STOP!'

Pete shouted, ‘Go for it, man.' As they accelerated across the junction, they were hit. The car rolled over once, throwing Pete out of the front window and sending glass flying. It landed on the opposite side of the road, upside down and was immediately smashed into by a post office van. The car rolled over once more and landed on its wheels.

There was a moment of silence as other drivers looked on in shock. The police car in chase arrived. The two officers from the chase car left their vehicle and approached the wreck in the centre of the crossroads. Apache climbed out of the front window and tried to run, straight into the arms of a police officer.

Mark climbed out of his side window and screamed, ‘Help, Martin's in there. My mate's in there.'

He limped around to the other side of the car and tried to open the door but the door was too damaged and would not open. He tried to pull Martin out of the window by his arms. Martin was unconscious. His bloody head just flopped down and Mark was unable to shift Martin's dead weight. A police officer grabbed Mark in a wrist lock and began to lead him away from the car.

Mark protested. ‘That's my mate, I'm trying to help my mate.'

‘We'll deal with him,' the officer said as he put more pressure on his wrist. The pain was such that Mark was unable to struggle and he was placed in the back of a police car next to Apache.

Apache was rigid with shock. His eyes were fixed straight ahead, he was motionless and emotionless. Blood poured from his ears and the various cuts on his face. Mark had no words for him.

Back at the crashed car, two police officers struggled with their bare hands to try and open the car door to free Martin. Ambulances, more police cars and a fire engine could be heard approaching, their sirens echoing in the night. When they arrived, the police officers ceased their struggle and raced towards the fire engine, knowing that the fire fighters would have cutting equipment. As they did so a loud explosion stopped them in their tracks. Flames licked the interior of the car. The two officers raced back to the
car and this time, with all the strength they had left in them they dragged Martin right out of the broken side window. His face was burnt and blackened, his body hung limp and his head rolled lifelessly between their arms. The paramedics laid him on a stretcher, lifted him into an ambulance and rushed him to hospital, whilst the fire fighters used their water hoses to extinguish the fire in the car.

From the back of the police car, Mark shouted as loud as he could, ‘That's my mate Martin. I wanna go with him, we're together.' But nobody listened to him.

As the ambulance sped away, Mark fell silent, watching it disappear into the distance. Apache groaned, his head fell forward and he vomited onto the floor of the police car. Tears came to Mark's eyes and he started crying silently.

Martin began to stir. He woke up slowly. He heard voices close to him. He was still hearing the voices of Mark, Apache and Pete Mosley. There were also the sounds in his brain, buzzing sounds, humming sounds, the sounds of a numbness and dizziness, like a radio in between stations. He kept his eyes closed while he tried to separate the real from the imaginary. Apart from the confusion in his head, he could feel no pain elsewhere on his body – in fact he couldn't even feel his body. He tried to stay calm and attempted to take things step by step.
First my right leg
, he told himself. He consciously instructed his brain to send a message to his right leg but there was no movement.
Now the left leg
. The result was the same. He tried his left arm, then his right arm but there was nothing. For a moment he gave in and tried to listen to the conversation taking place around him.

‘I told you ages ago, Clive, I don't like this area. I told you – we should have moved to Upminster long ago.
You can't bring kids up around our end without having to watch them every minute of the day. The drugs, the violence, the lack of respect.'

It was his mother speaking at his father.

‘You, you and your mates. You don't want to leave because you would miss your mates. Well, where are your mates now? Half of your mates haven't got kids and if they have got them, they don't know where they are most of the time. There's our kid, lying there.'

Martin began to work it all out as his mind cleared. He began to recall the car chase and its last moments when the car overturned. He could remember the first spin of the car like a slow motion replay. He remembered being trapped upside down after the spin and the noise of being hit by another vehicle, but that was all. Now it began to fall into place. The next question on his mind was,
what has happened to me?
His mother was still talking at his father in the room. She was speaking continuously without a break. Martin began to feel. He actually had a sensation in his fingertips, he began to feel the movement of blood in his veins. He concentrated hard as he tried to move his fingers. Movement was possible but very limited. He was unable to make a fist. As he became aware of his body, he could at least now feel warmth in his limbs.

Very slowly, he began to open his eyes. The hospital lights cut in and forced him to close them again.
He controlled his eyelids, opening them just enough to let his eyes get used to the idea of light. His eyelids flickered. For a moment he stared at his own eyelashes and as he continued his slow opening, he heard a scream.

‘Aaarrrgh, Clive, he's waking up, I saw his eyes. Move, Clive, he's waking up.'

‘OK, Wendy. It's all right,' Martin's father said in a whisper.

Martin opened his eyes fully. At first he looked straight ahead. He could see clearly but he could not see much, only the hospital ceiling. He closed his eyes once more; now he started a body check. He moved his toes, and tensed his calf muscles and his thigh muscles. He moved his whole left leg no more than a quarter of an inch and then his right leg. It was the smallest of movements but all he wanted to know was that he was in control. By now there was more movement in his fingers, and again, a very small movement of his arms satisfied him. He breathed in deeply and his chest rose. Now Martin opened his eyes again, trying as he did so to raise his eyebrows but there was absolutely no feeling there. He tried to smile but he could feel only a hard skin which he seemed unable to control. He tried to move his jaw from side to side but the skin seemed inflexible and his jaw wouldn't move.

At this point Martin knew that something terrible had happened to his face. His heart pounded hard in
his chest. He shifted his eyes to the left and saw his father standing over him.

‘Are you OK, son?'

Martin felt that he was using up all his strength just sending blood around his body and opening his eyes – he certainly didn't have the strength to speak. But his mind was beginning to work and he did think that
Are you OK, son?
was a strange question. He had very little idea of how he really was. His mother came into sight on his right side.

‘Martin, Martin my baby. We're here, Martin. We're gonna look after you, it's your mom and dad. We're here.'

His mother on one side began to cry uncontrollably, his father on the other side just stared into Martin's eyes. Martin blinked, the blink much slower than he thought it was. By the time he had re-focused, his father was on the same side as his mother with his arms around her. He could see the grief in his eyes and hear the anguish in her crying but he was helpless, unable to move, unable to speak and unable to reach out to her. He gave in. He closed his eyes and fell asleep to the sound of his mother crying above him.

Twenty-four hours later and Martin's parents were back sitting on chairs at each side of the bed. They had been home for a sleepless night and the lack of sleep was beginning to show. His mother had run out of steam and was now as silent as her husband. They both sat looking at Martin as if there was nothing else in the world.

Martin had been given a small side room on the Burns Unit of the Newham Parkside Hospital, the hospital where he had been born fifteen years before. He began to wake up and opened his eyes very slowly. This time he could hear no sound in the room. This time as he looked around the hospital ceiling with its built-in lights, he didn't need to work out where he was and what had brought him there. He was now more aware of himself and he began to feel the pains from the accident. The whole surface of his body felt hot. This time when he tried to move his feet they moved. His mother stood up and calmly looked down over him.

‘Martin, love, take it easy. Don't try to move too much.'

His father left the room. His mother struggled to find more words, looking deep into his eyes.

‘Don't worry, love, the doctor will be here soon and she'll explain everything to you. Just lie back and relax.'

When his father re-entered the room, he was accompanied by a nurse and doctor. One on each side, they both looked down at him and peered into his eyes before the doctor began to give the nurse instructions.

‘OK, Nurse, let's raise him up.'